Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The former Baud mill, located in Bourg-Charente (New Aquitaine), consists of two separate buildings reflecting its technical evolution. The western building (1934-1937) has a traditional stone and concrete structure, with a wooden frame and flat tile cover. The building is (1958-1961), made of reinforced concrete, has an erased fresco evoking wheats and a blade wheel, while its metal openings and fibro-cement roof illustrate industrial modernization. Inside, the machines cover all stages of the milling: Sagebien hydraulic wheel, motors (fuel from 1938 then electric), Lafon (1968) and Schneider-Jaquet cylinders, as well as equipment for animal feed added around 1963. The system of distribution, passed from bucket chains ( 1920-30s) to pneumatics (1959), bears witness to this technical adaptation.

The milling plant is part of the local milling history linked to Romède, a tributary of the Charente built in 1613 to feed the "high mills" and "low mills" of the hamlet of Veillard. In the 19th century, these mills belonged to the Jucquaud-Joussaume and Martin families. In the 1920s, Eugene Baud acquired the whole and began his reconstruction into an industrial mill, active until the 1990s. The town of Bourg-Charente bought the site in 2010 to enhance it as a museum heritage, while the Baud family kept the owner's house and a southern part emptied of its machines.

Ranked a Historic Monument in 2021, the Baud mill illustrates the transition between traditional craftsmanship and industrialization. Its inscription protects all buildings and machines, offering a complete panorama of 20th century milling techniques. The regularity of the flow of the Romade, exploited since the seventeenth century, was a key factor in its development, before activity ceased in the 1990s, marking the end of a local industrial era.

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